It has long been well known that proper lighting is a key ingredient in promoting robust and healthy plant growth. It is also known that optimized spectral outputs can be achieved to meet the specific needs of various plants during their growth phases. Known grow lamps are very energy intensive and adapted for delivering a high lumen output. Wattages of these high intensity arc-tube lamps range from 400 W to 1100 W. In commercial hydroponic and horticultural applications many of these lamps may be required. Therefore, it is readily observed that the aggregate power consumption of these types of lamps in a commercial operation is large and hence expensive. Much of the electrical energy consumed by a high intensity lamp is wasted in the form of heat. With rising energy costs there is a need to reduce the power consumption of grow lamps while maintaining their ability to stimulate desired plant growth. It is further desired to have a low energy consumption device that produces photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) at wavelengths that are usable by the plants. It is also further desired to have a grow lamp able to withstand the humidity and aerosol water droplets commonly found in greenhouse environments. It is further desired to have a lamp which needs little or no maintenance. It is further desired to have a lamp with an exceedingly long depreciation curve and working life.
Other sources of light, for example light emitting diodes (LEDs), are known to be capable of producing useful PAR with relatively small power consumption, virtually no heat, and a very long life. Therefore, these other sources of light, for example LEDs, can be adapted as grow lamps to offer a solution to the high power consumption of high intensity lamps.
Another shortcoming of current high intensity grow lamps is that they produce light by electrically arcing open current between an anode and cathode for the purpose of heating of high pressure gasses to a state of excited black body emission. This is essentially the same primitive principle resulting in the glow from an electric range element, except in that case the electricity stays safely within the heating element. The problem is that much of the power released in an arc lamp is emitted as photons which are directionally indiscriminately. Furthermore, the energy released falls largely in bands of the spectrum that are not useful for the stimulation of plant growth, indeed, there is evidence that the light power emitted by such systems may be detrimental to stages of plant development not directly involved in perennial harvest.
In our research, we have found that photosynthesis is not the sole use of light made by plants. Although they do get their primary operational energy source from photosynthesis, it has become clearer that many parts of the spectrum are used for environmental signalling in several dimensions. For example, competition for sunlight from other biota, temporal signals of both sidereal and seasonal cycles, atmospheric temperatures, the presence or absence of cloud cover, are just a few of the photometric environmental signals being read and understood by plant (and other forms of) life.
It follows that LEDs will be useful in mimicking these environmental signals for existing natural plants of all descriptions, and may indeed be useful for sending specifically pre-programmed signals to genetically modified life forms including but not limited to plants.
Another useful example implementing this principle is the ability to continuously vary the power outputs of multiple bands of phototropic radiation. The greatest power is placed into those bands which feed photosynthesis. These are 450 nm-470 nm and 640 nm-670 nm. However, other notch spectral bands have been added for such environmental signals as day/night cycles (@730 nm), seasonal cycles (@600 nm), and competitive signals (@525 nm). There are other notch spectral bands of interest in the ultraviolet range which is the ultraviolet—An environmental signals lying between 360 nm-410 nm. These signals may trigger harsh condition preparedness in plant life.
One advantage of the present invention is that any or all of the wavelengths mounted in a particular manufacture of our light emitting computer (LEC) can be changed during automated assembly without pause to the construction process. When research discovers new spectral power bands of influence to any form of life, biochemical process, or inorganic process; an LEC can be manufactured to provide the power necessary at the time and level to influence or drive multiple (up to six in one embodiment of the invention) spectrally specific phototropic processes, which may be sequential or parallel in their progression through time.
The LEC of our invention is designed to provide an application program interface (API) to a user programming system or graphical user interface (GUI) for the on board embedded computer. This permits a plurality of programs to be written for execution on the LEC. These programs will provide continuously variable power control over a range of phototropic wavelength specific emitters to energize and otherwise influence specific responses from plant life.
It is intended that in one embodiment of our invention, the apparatus will be used for implementing Phototropic Morphosis Management System (PMMS) methodology by the larger agronomy community to explore all forms of phototropic signalling and photosynthesis manipulations for an infinite variety of plant growing configurations. Utilizing PMMS with the present invention will result in an increasing range of knowledge in the agronomy community, which is one of humanity's largest and oldest. The present invention is therefore well adapted to the establishment of an open source community within which new knowledge of phototropic influences and optimizations for plant and other forms of life will be implemented, shared, and traded in the form of PMMS programs created to be run on the various embodiments of our invention.
Thus is created an entire domain of intellectual property within the structure of the LEC to run PMMS software for users, who in turn may then create new individual and highly specific implementations of new examples of PMMS software for the purpose of influencing a particular plant to grow in a particular fashion, which new PMMS programs those users may then trade or share within the larger LEC using community.